Somalia has challenged India to oppose WhatsApp’s plan to allow people to communicate with usernames instead of phone numbers, widening the dispute that now spans two continents.
The support, makes Somalia the second national government in less than a week to formally ask Meta about the username feature that was first rolled out at the end of June.
WhatsApp began allowing its nearly three billion users to keep unique handles on June 29, a feature that should go live later this year. A phone number is still required to open an account, but once a handle is set up, new contacts no longer need to see the number behind it.
The project is exactly what worries New Delhi, which last week asked WhatsApp to halt the rollout while discussing the risks of fraud. With more than 600 million users, India is WhatsApp’s single largest market, and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has given Meta three days to explain why the feature will not encourage impersonation.
The Somali governor has now had enough of that thinking. Mustafa Yasin Sheikh, director general of the National Communications Authority of Somalia, told Bloomberg by phone on Monday that changing phone numbers to include handles could hamper the ability of Somalia’s security agencies to identify people involved in terrorism, organized crime, and other illegal activities.
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“Somalia is following the example of India,” Sheikh said. He cited concerns about impersonation of government agencies and government officials, financial fraud targeting Somalia’s mobile money system, and misuse of anonymous communications by groups such as al-Shabaab and organized cybercrime networks.
The reference is not accidental. The Somali government has been fighting al-Shabaab rebels linked to al-Qaeda since 2006, a conflict that has killed thousands and displaced millions of people, and the country considers any relaxation of digital traceability as a security question first.
Meta did not respond to an emailed request for comment on Somalia’s objections, according to sources familiar with the Bloomberg report. The company has said that the feature is not yet available in India and has used usernames such as those known to the public, government agencies and verified Meta accounts to stop impersonation.
A shared thread running through both government complaints is traceability, the concern that a physical handle rather than a number gives investigators a small starting point when chasing down a bad actor. India’s notice warned that usernames “may facilitate impersonation and identity fraud, including impersonating government authorities, financial institutions, and government agencies.”
It is an argument that has been raised by India before. When the government moved to trace WhatsApp messages in previous conflicts, Meta refused on the grounds that such demands would weaken the encryption end for every user, not just the suspicious ones.
The line of user names also sits alongside the broader Indian push against anonymity features in messaging apps. New Delhi recently banned Telegram channels over leaked exam papers, while MeitY has sent similar notices to Telegram and Signal about their user plans.
Not everyone welcomes legal action. The Internet Freedom Foundation, a digital rights organization in New Delhi, argued that MeitY extends the field liability provision of the IT Act to product design oversight, and that fraud should be prosecuted under existing criminal law rather than preempted by holding a feature.
For now, this feature remains unavailable in India, and the Somalia intervention shows that Meta’s idea of a phone number may be subject to country-to-country negotiations rather than a single global change. What Mogadishu does next, and whether other states follow, will show how far the opposition goes.
